Layover in Frankfurt, Germany

12/18/2009

On our way to Egypt we had a six hour lay-over in Frankfurt, Germany. Our supervisors decided that if some of us wanted to travel into town with Dr. Walsh and Omaima that we could go for an hour or a little bit longer. So about 12 of us took full advantage of this and we headed into Frankfurt by the subway train while the others caught up on their rest. While on the subway we had one funny experience that made everyone laugh. This guy got on the train with us at the station and Dr. Walsh started to ask him questions about what we should see in Frankfurt. Well, we told him that we were on our way to Cairo, Egypt and the guy did not understand why we were on the subway. He kept asking and asking why were we on the train and that if he was us, he would have stayed at the airport and taken a plain to Egypt not the subway. We all laughed and said we were just visiting for a couple of hours then flying out. Well, come to find out, the guy we were talking to was a little intoxicated. He kept asking us the same questions over and over and was telling us he was from Dallas, Texas and he had friends in Missouri, but the catch 22 was he asked where Missouri was. Towards the end of our ride he kept saying “I’m drunk, I’m married, and I’m happy”. This was really funny because he was standing in front of the door to get on the subway train and everyone else that did not know what was going on was getting mad at him for blocking the door. It was quite the experience to start our “out of the country experience”. The rest of Frankfurt was beautiful and I could not get over the architectural work on the buildings there. They would have whole humans or faces carved out of the pillars in great detail. Another thing was that some of their markets and stores were mostly underground. I thought that was pretty neat. After we had walked around for about an hour and half we decided we better head back to the airport. Well, this brought us to another adventure because we took the wrong train and had to find our way back to the main station and get on the right train. After a while we found the right one and made it safely back to the airport and made it through customs and security just fine. We even had time to get a short nap in and grab us some McDonalds at the airport. It really didn’t taste that much different than what an American McDonalds would taste like. We then flew out of Frankfurt, Germany around 1:45 p.m. and headed towards Cairo, Egypt, where our journey really starts to take off.